XXX 



IF there is any one kind of riding between the worst of 

 which and the best there is a great gulf fixed, it is the 

 jockey's. Unless that demolisher of pet traditions and 

 shams instantaneous photography had shown us the 

 extremity to which bad jockeyship could be carried, we 

 should scarcely credit the mechanical possibility of some 

 of the positions the track-rider can assume. The average 

 jockey has no more to do with winning a race than the 

 time -keeper in a neck -and -neck race by no means so 

 much. You will see him suspended, as it were, in four- 

 fold straps his stirrups and the bridle-reins one quadru- 

 ped bestriding another, and not the more intelligent atop. 

 He relies as much on the reins as he does on the leathers, 

 and has no control over his horse, no power to save or 

 coax him whatsoever. Considering who the jockeys are, 

 what their training is, and what the average race is like, 

 this is no great wonder. But Fordham and Cannon and 

 Archer did not ride this way, not to mention older celeb- 

 rities ; nor do our own better jockeys. It is a thousand 

 pities that we have no photographs of Archer stealing 

 one of his celebrated races. The ability to ride a puller in 

 a snaffle-bridle, or to win with a slack rein without whip 

 or spur, is as unusual as the art of coaxing a horse, and of 

 making the most of his courage or nervousness or obsti- 

 nacy. How many modern jockeys study their horses, or 

 can cut and whip a race out of a slug, or wheedle it out of 

 a sulky jade? They use steel and whalebone on the will- 



